CHAPTER XI.
THE BOND OF HONOR.
It was evening. Roland was going through the village. In the streets floated an odor of the May wine; everybody was merry and bustling; the wine-presses were creaking and dripping in the streets, men were moving along slowly with full heavy tubs on their backs.
Roland gazed at everybody with questioning look; he would have liked to cry out,—
See, here is a beggar, he begs of you something of love, of kindness, of pity for him and his father. Ah, only a little charity!
He saw the houses to which on his births day he had carried joy-bringing gifts; the people returned his greetings, but they were not, as formerly, gladdened and honored by them; he left the village.
Outside of it, on the river-bank, he sat behind a hedge, as he did before he ran away to Eric. Now he was sitting in unspeakable sadness, that bade fair to wither his life-strength. A water-ousel flew up near him. With childish self-forgetfulness, he bent the boughs away from each other, and saw a nest with five young ones stretching out their bills. How happy he would have been in by-gone days to have made such a discovery! Now, he stood there, and said to himself sadly,—
Ah! you are at home.
He heard a carriage come rattling towards him on the road, and he thought of that poor servant in the night, who would rather hunger and beg than possess property unjustly acquired.
Not far from him on the bank a boat was loosened from its chain; he heard the chain rattle, and at the same moment he felt in his heart as if he heard the slaves, who, bound in one long chain, were coming towards him; and this again transformed itself in his imagination, and he saw the dwarf, fettered as he had once seen him, and the groom; they were walking along the road, and behind them the constable, with his loaded gun gleaming in the sun.
He looked, up.
There, indeed, was a constable walking along. What if he were coming to arrest his father?
O no, there was no fear of that!
What was the matter, then?
And while his eye was still fastened on the bush behind which the constable disappeared, he became, as it were, clairvoyant, his sight reaching out to all things instinctively. His thought stretched away to Clodwig, to the Doctor, to the Major, to the Huntsman. What are they all saying? Profoundly it came upon him: Man does not live for himself alone. There is an invisible and inseparable community, whose bond is respect and honor. He could bear no longer to sit alone with his confused thoughts; he said to himself almost aloud;—
"To the Huntsman's."
With nimble foot and beating heart, as if he expected to find something there, he knew not what, he ascended the mountain. Before reaching the town he was met by the second son of the Huntsman; he too was slowly plodding: he was carrying a heavy tub of young wine. The lad was of the same age with Roland, and while still at some distance, he cried out:—
"Father said that you would come. Just go right in, he is expecting you."
Roland thanked him and went on. As he entered the Huntsman's house, the latter cried out to him:—
"Knew you were coming. Have a salve for you. Needn't tell me anything, know everything this long while. Can give you something."
"What?"
"Boy, there are two things in the world that help; praying and drinking. If you can't pray, drink till you have enough. Come, that's the best thing."
"Shame on you," rejoined Roland, "shame on you, there is another thing."
"What now? What?"
"Why, thinking. I cannot yet do it well at all, and I know not what will come of it, but still help must come of it."
"Huzza!" cried the Huntsman, "you're a splendid lad! Say, have you decided yet what you'll do with the big pile of money, when you've once got it in your hand?"
"No."
"Very well. No doubt you'll learn. Now, I tell you, don't fret your young life away. Have pity on your father; he is a poor man, with all his millions. Show that you're a lad who deserves to have the sun shine on him.
"Listen! mind!" he said, interrupting himself suddenly.
The black-bird was singing the melody: "Rejoice in your life." Roland and the Huntsman looked at each other, and Roland smiled.
"Just so!" cried the Huntsman. "Learn that by heart, too. Rejoice In your life, all else is silly stuff. The bird is sensible. You've done your part well." He nodded to the black-bird, which was regarding the man and the boy with a wise look, as if it knew what it had done, and was sure of applause; and turning to Roland, he continued merrily;—
"So—just so!—just so! Hold up your head, and if you need any one, call on me. You got me out of prison; that I'll never forget. Now come and be merry, as your dogs are."
He took out a loaf of bread, which Roland was to give to the dogs to eat; but Roland ate first with great zest.
"Hurrah! victory!" shouted Claus, "you're hungry. The battle's won! Now let the water run down the Rhine, there's another day to-morrow."
Eric had had a presentiment that Roland would be at the field-guard's; he went after him, and was rejoiced to find him calm once more. They went home together, and Roland said:—
"Over there at the Huntsman's it came into my head all at once: What would Benjamin Franklin say to me now? Do you know, Eric, what he would say?"
"Not entirely, but I think he would say that a man who does nothing but grieve stands on a level with the brute, which in a mishap cannot help itself. The power of man has its beginning in this, that he can grasp, comprehend, and direct his misfortune in such a way as to make something out of it for his own good. If you suffer yourself to fall asleep in affliction, you are responsible for your own injury. Rouse yourself. As long as there is anything which you can esteem in yourself, you have aright to the esteem of others."
"Thanks," exclaimed Roland. "For my part, I have been thinking what Benjamin Franklin would say. I saw him before me with his genial countenance, his long snow-white hair, and he said:—Mark you, the worst thing is not what shames us in the eyes of the world, but to allow the shame so to pervert your mind that you look upon all men as base."
What he had listened to on the way he had shaped into a strong pillar of thought for himself.
Eric could not tell how it gladdened his heart to feel that he had fashioned this youth for such things; he wanted to cry out to him, You are a man; but he repressed it. It would not do to say it aloud. With a tranquillity wrung from the most profound grief, they both returned to the villa.
They reached the garden wall, from the face of which the porter was scraping something.
"There it is! there it is!" exclaimed Roland. "I have read it!"
The porter was scraping the mortar with a sharp iron, and this scraping went through Roland's soul as if the work were done on his own heart. All the coolness and composure that he had gained disappeared.
"There it is!" he exclaimed. "It will have to be scraped off again to-morrow, and the day after to-morrow, and forever. Ah, Eric, why are men so wicked! What good does it do them to insult us?"
Eric consoled him by saying that men are not so wicked, they merely liked to irritate and mock one another.
He accompanied Roland to his room, and there the youth sat still, his hand clenched and pressed against his lip, till his teeth left their mark on his fingers. For a long while he spoke not a word. He looked at the stuffed bird, and said softly to himself once more, "Hiawatha!"
He stood at the window, and looked down into the park, up into the sky, where the swallows were gathering in great flocks, getting ready to cross the sea into warmer lands. Everything, everything has its home, something was saying in the heart of this youth; the plant that cannot stir is carried to a secure shelter, and the swallow draws to a place where it can still be happy. O, if some one could only tell us now where we might be happy!
All at once he shrank back from the window, for he saw the Russian prince entering the courtyard; behind the Prince came the Doctor in his carriage. Roland begged Eric to leave him alone, and not bring any one to see him.
Eric went away, and Roland locked himself up in his room.